Egyptian Adventures Day 1

Daniel and I arrived in Cairo at night to a bustling, hot, crowded terminal and waited in the passport control line. There were a lot of families in line, anxious old ladies that shifted their weight from leg to leg, men with varying degrees of facial hair and of course all of them had different levels of body odor. The family behind us in line had two little girls with their hair in pig tails and the same yellow dress with pink flowers on. They seemed very well behaved despite the chaos around them.

The line moved slowly enough but we were at the security point talking to a nice guy wearing the white Egyptian army uniform. He was very friendly but realized we did not buy a visa. At this point Dan started to sputter with frustration and I walked along with him like a zombie to the Bank of Masr (Bank of Egypt) kiosk to get the $15 useless visa. It took no application, no justification just give them the money and they put a sticker in your passport.

So we went back in line and waited yet again to go through passport control. It was simple enough, but it would've helped if there was a sign that clearly said "get your visa first at this random bank of Egypt kiosk and then get in line". But that's not how Egypt works. Ever.

Leaving the arrivals area we were inundated with cab drivers offering rides at very inflated prices. Dan spent some time speaking in Arabic to them and haggling. I didn't understand a lot of it seeing as I've only taken one semester of the language and he's lived in Cairo for a semester etc. Finally we got this man that took us to his cab in the lot and told us to wait while he tries to get one more passenger.

Dan and I waited in the cab but the driver didn't show. We took our stuff out and were about to get another cab when we saw the driver running towards us. So we stayed with the same driver but got jipped in the end of the price because we didn't have exact change. Driving down the highways I felt like I was in Dhaka again because there were no traffic laws. The lines on the road were mere suggestions, people used their horns to just say "hey I'm coming up on your right/left and you better accommodate me 'cause I'm not stopping."

We stayed in a multi-purpose building with a hotel on the 9th floor. It was really an office building of some sort but it was very clean and in the center of Cairo. The two men who worked there spoke English and someone was on duty all night or all day. I was just glad that it was clean and the toilets were the regular sit-down ones and not the squatting ones. The showers were great too to get all the dirt from the city off your tortured pores. The city really was an assault on all the senses.

Day 1: Bab Zuwayla

Daniel, our friend Nick and I did a lot of walking this day. We walked from Cairo's Medan Tahrir to old Cairo. We saw this old gate called Zuwayla and the surrounding mosques.
The gates were erected around the Fatimid dynasty. To read more about the history.




For a small fee we were able to go up into the gates and see the view of Cairo from above.
We could see the Citadel and the Al Azar mosque through the lovely Cairean haze.


We would visit the Citadel the following day.

There was this one house/apartment that actually had goats on their decrepit rooftops.


The best part about the gates was this sign:




While exploring these old fortifications we stumbled upon some minarets with small, dark entrances. There were no signs saying we could not climb up these tall, narrow, elaborate structures so we did. When we stepped into one it was not cooler than the outside temperature as one would imagine. The stairs were very small and the passageway narrow. The stairs were not much bigger than my size-five feet. I wondered how Nick was doing climbing up behind me.




This picture was taken on our way up the minaret I believe. We could not go to the very top because it turned into very unstable, iron bars that served as a ladder. How a man could climb up one of these and then deliver an adhan I'll never know. The view was amazing though and the breeze refreshing after all the walking, sweating, and trekking through Cairo on foot. But of course the best way to get to know a city is on foot.

Nearby there was the Al-Muyyad mosque that we had to visit. This was the first step towards our eventual mosque overload. All the mosques we saw are beautiful works of architecture but I did end up getting kind of overwhelmed with the number of mosques I saw. And I was brought up Muslim.

We stopped by the Khan el-Khalili one of the oldest markets in the world. I found a site that has a great video with a guide talking about the Khan. Here I bought my mother and aunt some pretty prayer beads. We did most of our shopping on this day for friends and family back home. We also bought our shisha.

The three of us walked up and down the narrow streets, repeatedly refusing offers for goods that poor Egyptians tried to sell us. Things that we clearly did not want or need.
We took a short breather at Fushowi's an old ahwa where Daniel and I shared a shisha and Nick sipped some tea. We sat in a private area with intricate dark woodwork, mirrors that look like someone stole them our of Versailles, and of course the kittens that infest the city. There are so many cats in the city because they are considered holy, I think. But they are almost as bad as rats. But of course if there weren't so many cats the city would be infested with rodents so I'd much rather have a surplus of "fury, cute disease vectors".